Believe it or not Facebook, the social network launched in a college dorm room six years ago, reached 1 Billion users this year. Almost everybody now has a FB account they say. You can’t join a new group without hearing the magic word Facebook at least once daily. You add friends, post, like your friend things just like you would tell him in real life that he is right or he takes nice pictures sometimes.

And as you see in the picture above, there’s only one guy responsible for that: Mark Zuckerberg. Reaching 1 billion users is one of the things Mark Zuckerberg is most proud of. He is also committed on “working every day to make Facebook better for you, and hopefully together one day we will be able to connect the rest of the world too”. I’ll tell you in 2 years if he can do it.

Cool Stats about Facebook

Over 1.13 trillion likes since launch in February 2009.

140.3 billion friend connections.

219 billion photos uploaded.

62.6 million songs have been played 22 billion times – that’s about 210,000 years of music.

604 million monthly active users who used Facebook mobile products as of September 30, 2012.

584 million daily active users on average in September 2012.

Facebook Future

Although they had experienced loopholes, privacy issues and their stock is not doing that good, Facebook is still going further and remains important for the tech environment. Right now it’s hard to imagine a world without Facebook and also a Facebook without world. The good think is that Facebook is looking forward and tries to reinvent itself from time to time. I like this thing, but at the same time I would want and expect more transparency from them. I don’t like ads and I don’t like Facebook cookies that track users browsing history just to collect previous information for future.

It is rumoured that they are looking to release a mobile phone a search engine over the next years. The search engine seems to be closer than ever as it appears Facebook it’s already working on it. Mark Zuckerberg himself said earlier this year, while talking at Disrupt with Michael Arrington that “Facebook is pretty uniquely positioned to answer the questions people have. At some point we’ll do it. We have a team working on it”. It seems to be the next logical step since according to Experian Marketing Services, Facebook was the top search term in 2012 for fourth year in the US.

I couldn’t but remember an old conversation between Mark Zuckerberg and one of his friends when he was 19 years old and The Facebook was just released.

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at HarvardZuck: Just ask.Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend’s Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?Zuck: People just submitted it.Zuck: I don’t know why.Zuck: They “trust me”Zuck: Dumb fucks.

It isn’t wise to say this, but at 19 years old you are still young. Mark Zuckerberg confirmed the IMs and “absolutely” regretted them:

If you’re going to go on to build a service that is influential and that a lot of people rely on, then you need to be mature, right? I think I’ve grown and learned a lot.

At the same time with Facebook, Zuckerberg also reached his maturity, but it has to continue and improve himself because the responsibility of interconnecting 1 billion active users is huge. Someday users might get bored using this service and decide to shift their attention away . That’s why Zuckerberg needs to be careful and try not to fall in the other [dark] side and use Facebook just like a “tool”.

To celebrate this billion landmark, in October Facebook released their first ever agency-created video ad. It’s called “The Things That Connect Us” and it’s created by Wieden & Kennedy.